Mahmoud Darwish

And We Have Countries … - Poem by Mahmoud Darwish

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And we have countries without borders, like our idea of the unknown, narrow and wide - countries whose maps narrow to a gray tunnel as we walk in them and cry out in their labyrinths: 'And still we love you.' Our love is an inherited disease. Countries that grow by tossing us into the unknown. Their willows and portrayals grow, their grasses and blue mountains. A lake widens north of the soul. Wheat spikes spring up south of the soul. The lemon shines like a lamp in an emigrant's night. Geography emits sacred texts. And the ascending chain of hills reaches higher and higher. The exile tells himself: 'If I were a bird I would burn my wings.' The smells of autumn become the image of one I love, soft rain seeps into the dry heart and imagination opens to its source and becomes reality's terrain, the only true place. Everything distant becomes rural and primitive, as if the earth were still gathering itself to meet Adam descending from his paradise. I say: These are the countries that bear us…so when were we born? Did Adam take two wives? Or will we be born again to forget sin?